Monday, December 24, 2007

Dan Seals Still Doesn't Get It?

My opponent, Dan Seals has run for congress in the Illinois 10th once already but he continues to show that he doesn't understand the district. That is no surprise, the man has never lived in the 10th district. He has also shown that he may not be up to speed on American politics. According to 10th district blogger TA at Team America's Tenth District Blog, Mr. Seals has been sending out e-mails decrying the use of earmarks in the latest budget passed by the House. Somebody should probably tell Mr. Seals that the Republican Party is no longer running the US House of Representatives, that of course means that Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) is not in a leadership position that could put a stop to earmark abuse. The use of earmarks was a Democratic strategic argument during the last election, the one that Mr. Seals lost. Thus it is more than a little strange that he would try that strategy again, especially when the Democratic Party leaders are to blame for any earmarks in this budget. Mr. Seals is running as a Democrat.

It is noticeable that the earmark system has become much more opaque since the Democratic takeover of Congress just 12 months ago. Many of the commenters at Team America's Tenth... have taken Mr. Seals to task for stating that he would have voted against the earmarks that represent needed projects for the Tenth District. But seriously folks, why the heck should Dan Seals care? He lives in Janice Schakowsky's district.

TA rightly recalls that Rep. Kirk helped to kill the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" that Flying Debris commented on here after finding that Dan Seals' biggest supporter, Ellen Beth Gill of Ellen's Tenth District Blog had taken Rep. Kirk to task for cutting off that pork-barrel project in an inane post titled "Imagine No Way to Get to O'Hare". Because Ms. Gill was so confused about O'Hare, Flying Debris wrote the following in order to help Ms. Gill understand the Chicago are economy:

As a friendly note to Ms. Gill; O'Hare is a serious piece of infrastructure that affects millions of people in the tri-state area and around the nation; and I'm not even talking about the air travelers. To see an example of O'Hare's importance to the non-traveler Ms. Gill and her cohorts may want to take a drive along the southern boundary of O'Hare Airport. Drive down Irving Park Road west of Narraganset and take a look (to the north) at the traffic coming out of the O'Hare shipping terminal. For some further education they should trail some of those trucks that leave O'Hare and follow them down to the Joliet area, a booming trans-shipment are for the entire Midwest. It could be an educational field trip of sorts. Then they could try the same exercise in Ketchikan, the amount of industry that is reliant on air transport is underwhelming and it is hard to imagine the industry that would rush to take advantage of easier access to the Ketchikam airport other than tourism. I guess that somebody has to stick up for the wealthy fishermen of the 10th district and their desire to catch (non Lake Michigan) salmon and Ms. Gill fits the bill.



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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

When: Thursday, December 27th
Noon

Where: Lake County Democratic HQ
709 North Ave
Waukegan IL 60085

What: Veterans Rally Against Dan Seals.

Calling all veterans in Lake County -- do you support the North Chicago Navy-VA Hospital? If you do, then come out to show your support for the hospital expansion, for Congressman Kirk's leadership on this issue and to protest Dan Seals' opposition to our health care needs.

5:44 PM  
Blogger El Rider said...

Anonymous,
Thank you for the tip about the Veterans Rally. I have been too ill to post or frankly even read anything for a few days, otherwise I would have written a post on the protest. Please keep me updated on any other actions you guys are part of. Thanks again.

7:53 PM  

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